Blogs from Asia - page 15004

The Wedding Ceremony: Oh wait, before the wedding ceremony. I forgot to say what also happened at the Gateway To India... Gateway to India: A "holy man" dressed in robes grabbed my wrist and tied yellow and red strings around them. He then blessed me. I thought it was pretty cool and said Namaste (thank you) to the guy. But nothing is free in India so he asked for a donation and shot him a ten. Later, in the shower, my religious strings bled and I had to throw them away. It looked like psycho in the shower as my blessings went down the drain... back to... The Wedding Ceremony: This is what I wore my traditional Indian dress for. Yes, the Kaftan, scarf, and shoes. The whole nine yards. Danielle didn't wear a sari (because ... read more

...was not danced at Melanie's and Vikram's wedding celebration which was the day after the ceremony. I'd describe the party in detail, but it was like pretty much every western wedding. So if you attended a wedding reception recently, it was close to the same thing. Good food, drinks, appetizers, music, and people dressed in fancy clothes. There were some minor differences... LIKE WE WERE IN INDIA AND YOU WEREN'T! Food: The food, like all the food we've had was incredible. Waiters would walk around with appetizers and the big problem was that I loved the appetizers so much, that I wouldn't have room for the regular food. So during the three day wedding, I've kept my drinking to a minimum so I'd have more room for food. Some men think about sex every 10 seconds ... read more

Last weekend, I traveled with a group of HMI staff and students to the medieval Islamic city of Bidar. Bidar is located about 150 km east of Hyderabad in the neighboring state of Karnataka, and was the capital of two Deccan Muslim dynasties, the Bahmanis and the Barid Shahis, from about 1400 to the 1600’s. Bidar is famous for its fort and for the many tombs in the city that house many of the Bahmani and Barid rulers, their families, as well as an Iranian Sufi whose tomb is still venerated today, Khalil Allah. The city nowadays is a backwater town, still predominantly Muslim, and rarely sees visitors—in fact, our group received more than the usual stares from the locals. The fort at Bidar is encircled by about 10 km of baked brick fortifications, which on ... read more

Udaipur is strictly second division as a fly zone when compared with Pushkar, and the breakfast calories from my toast (no eggs here either) were burned off with the constant flicking that I found myself doing. There's also a litter of puppies in this area that likes to beg from any available humans, and one of them took a liking to my bag and kept plonking himself down on it. If fleas are in my immediate future, then so be it. After speaking with the hotel travel agent (who was also the Internet guy I'd berated yesterday evening for having such a treaclelike connection), I booked a sleeper berth on tomorrow's night bus to Agra. Having seen sleeper berths on previous buses in Rajasthan, and noted that they resembled stuffy glass coffins, I was keen to ... read more

Ohayo Gosaimas, Ca veux dire bon matin bande de baka... errr ca ca veut dire stupide. Belle facon d'amener des petites lecon d'anglais dans le blog non? Bon commencons avec les mauvaises nouvelles; JE TRAVAIL LE 12 AU MATINNNN maudit! Ca veut dire que je vais etre a Tokyo juste le 12 vers 8h00. Mais bon, ca ne me derange pas trop. Pour ce qui est du Japon, je vais me donner un objectif de 2 mois (mais je vais seulement pouvoir verifier a partir de Tokyo si c'est possible). Yannick voudrais que je reste au moins 6 mois, mais presentement je n'en ai pas l'intention. Mais rien est jouer encore, p-e que je vais finir par passer mon annee ici, mais j'en doute. A part de ca, pas grand chose a dire, merci de m'ecrire ... read more